electricity

these black lines
carry Civilization
rubber-coated...

yellow droplets in a dark hill
(porch-lit suburban avenues),
blinking red-white beacon beams
across our dim horizons:
all these dripping slow from
our black-stretched lines,
hung from frowning iron gallows,
dead forests of limb-stripped trees.

carrying pictures, songs, our many
absent-made rubber-coat conversations
this stretched blanket-net
(though silent here)
noisily quiet violent instinct,
pouring pools of orange light
to keep us safe from us
and shivering gutter men
with shadowy lips.

lines sway;
a storm's swirling
in cloudy thought...

enormous wind, wind! runs through
and over, huge around my eyes
peering up at these black lines
now snapping! whipping!
pulling fierce upon their iron anchors!
Nature strains against the Lilliputian strings
that bind her children to the earth
in pretty hats and scarves.

in violent rage She sees and despises
her ancient, Ancestral worshipers modernized:
barbarians in cologne & red stilettos!
She wordless seethes and violent gusts again.
no fool, She knows who is to blame
for long before these rubber-coated lines were forged
her sons lived naked: wild and free!
now net-blanketed in a web of spider-string,
protected only by enslavement to such
false, false gods!

and with a mighty pull She breaks one line.
lights die across the patchwork hills, becoming one
silhouetted mass, the distant yellow droplets dry,
our long horizon beacons now sudden ghost-grey hilltop spikes;
we new barbarians let loose our wild beards,
feel grim freedom crawling behind us in the shadow
looking skyward from blackened porches
into an ancient night; though born to slavery,
we loudly now reclaim dark Nature!
forgotten Matriarch, we return!




may '06
dec '09
oct '10